In a move it hopes will lure budding entrepreneurs who dream of souped-up Silicon Valley workspaces, the University of Utah plans to build a residence hall that blurs life and work the same way technology giants Facebook and Google do at their headquarters.

It's modeled after startup spaces in San Francisco and New York that are designed to promote a culture of innovation, said Troy D'Ambrosio, executive director of the institute.

To that end, a 20,000-square-foot workspace called the "garage" on the ground floor will offer 3-D printers and rooms to build prototypes. The garage is open 24 hours a day to accommodate bursts of off-hours inspiration.

"If you have an idea at 2 a.m., you want to be able to get up and act on your idea," said Mehrdad Yazdani, head of Yazdani Studio, the building's designer. He says the space will give students "the flexibility to be in their pajamas and then create something."

Video games, pool tables, foosball tables, and a ground-floor coffee shop will foster connections between programmers, designers, and future managers, D'Ambrosio said. The building looks good from the outside, too, with a modern exterior meant to mimic the shapes of the adjacent Wasatch Mountain range.

University officials and architects want the building to be as nimble as a startup. It's designed on a flexible grid system, which will allow the university to reconfigure rooms and expand the garage as student needs change. "Our goal is, five years after it opens, that it'll be an entirely different-looking building," D'Ambrosio said. "Universities usually build something that lasts 50 to 100 years, but when you're an entrepreneur, things change rapidly."

The dorm's 400 or so residents will be a mix of undergraduates and graduate students, so that "more mature entrepreneurial students" can mentor undergrads, according to a presentation the architects gave in February. Shared rooms were designed with less privacy and more open meeting space to encourage students to work together on startups.

But some students are wary of sleeping, partying, and launching their company in the same building. Students requested some breathing room, prompting the designers to modify their plans. They added private "sleeping pods" - single rooms for students who want privacy - and workspaces for teams of students to tinker behind closed doors, so introverts needn't worry. "There are opportunities in the building to completely shut down and stay away," Yazdani said.

Baylor University and the University of Wisconsin at Madison have also created housing options to help student entrepreneurs collaborate. Schools are "marketing the housing inventory to attract and keep students. They're doing it in a number of different ways, including adding academic space to the housing," said Arthur Lidsky, president of the college campus planning firm Dober Lidsky Mathey.

Winning recognition as the school with the boldest and most beautiful student housing design isn't cheap. The median cost-per-square-foot of residence halls increased by about one-third from 2010 to 2013, according to a survey by the magazine College Planning & Management.

Costs for students are going up, too: The price of room and board for on-campus housing at public universities went up 3.8 percent between the 2011-12 and 2013-14 academic years, according to a U.S. Department of Education report released this month.

The University of Utah hasn't yet determined the price of living at Lassonde Studios. The building will cost $45 million, 70 percent of which the university will pay for in debt, with Pierre Lassonde and other donors chipping in the remaining $13 million, D'Ambrosio said.